Hoosiers fall prey to 2 top-15 teams over weekend

The IU women’s tennis team dropped a pair of matches this weekend to top-ranked opponents, No. 2 Notre Dame on Saturday and No. 11 Northwestern on Sunday.\nIU coach Lin Loring said the Hoosiers were going to remain loose and play with “controlled reckless abandon” for this weekend’s matches, but it wasn’t enough to overcome their opponents’ talent.\nThe Hoosiers remained competitive early against the Fighting Irish and threatened to take the doubles point. Two IU doubles combinations lost 8-6, including the duo of senior Laura McGaffigan and sophomore Alba Berdala, who nearly upset the No. 8 team of Catrina and Christian Thompson.\n“For 50 minutes they probably played the best tennis they have all season,” Loring said of McGaffigan and Berdala. “They were literally two points away from winning that match.”\nMcGaffigan later took Christian Thompson to a tiebreaker in singles, but she fell in that final set along with IU’s hopes of preventing a 7-0 loss.\n“I had a good time playing her today,” McGaffigan said. “I just wish I could have come out on top.”\nLoring said Saturday’s match better prepared his team to play “tough tennis” on Sunday. And though the Hoosiers experienced another loss, they showed improvement.\nMcGaffigan and Berdala again competed at a high level in doubles, but they successfully pulled off the upset Sunday, defeating the No. 13 duo in the nation.\nJunior Brianna Williams and freshman Erin Clark also won in doubles to claim the match’s first point for IU.\nThough sophomore Sigrid Fischer won her singles match, the Hoosiers weren’t able to tally enough points to claim the victory, and they fell 2-5.\nThe losses dropped the Hoosiers to 15-5 on the season and 5-1 in conference, but McGaffigan said the team’s psyche wasn’t affected.\n“We knew none of us had anything to lose,” she said, “so I don’t think our confidence was really hurt that much.”